Abstract:
Engineers spend a considerable amount of time in communicating with technical and non-technical audiences when on work. Due to the high demands of good technical writing skills, most engineering faculties and educationists take special initiatives for fostering such attributes but writing skills for non-technical people is often overlooked. A large number of students stumble into writing with an inadequate sense of the significance of their audience - a problem that needs attention. This introductory study analyzes the engineering students' writing when addressing non-technical people. We conducted short writing exercises in a third-year engineering course aiming at pitching an idea to non-technical audiences with a view to assessing their ability to adapt their writing according to the audiences. These writings are analyzed using the freely available text analyzing tools. The analysis revealed that students' writings are complex and tend to address the more qualified people than general audiences. Furthermore, their writings are usually dominated by an analytical tone. The preliminary findings provide ample encouragement to further explore this topic and provide a basis for related practitioners to address this issue and develop strategies to overcome this issue.